MIX INTERVIEW
J E F F LY N N E
Photo: MattPhoto: Hurwitz
S T R A N G E M A G I C
BY MATT HURWITZ
Following the breakup of ELO in 1986, Lynne leased a second, Long Wave, a tribute to the clas-sics turned heavily to producing other artists, including he heard on the BBC on his father’s long-wave radio Since his introduction to the recording stu-dio George Harrison, Dave Edmunds, Paul McCartney, in the late ’50s and early ’60s. Released the same day in the late 1960s, Jeff Lynne has proven himself a Ringo Starr, Tom Petty, Roy Orbison and a band was Mr. Blue Sky: The Very Best of Electric Light continual innovator. With the formation of Electric listed at the top of his recording heroes, The Beatles Orchestra, for which Lynne has taken a sec-ond pass Light Orchestra (Lynne, Roy Wood, Bev Bevan) in themselves, for whom he produced the group’s An- at some of ELO’s biggest hits. 1970, he introduced the in-clusion of orchestral string players as permanent members of the band, thology reunion tracks, “Free As a Bird” and “Real Recording of the two albums took place at adding a new layer to the pop soundscape. Soon Love” in 1994-95. He was also, of course, a member Lynne’s Los Angeles home, where he has lived these after, the move to Giorgio Moroder’s Musicland and co-producer of The Traveling Wilburys, with past 17 years overlooking L.A. and on a good day studio and collaboration with engineer Reinhold Harrison, Petty, Orbison and Dylan, releasing two gaining a view of Catalina. The space has a warm Mack in the mid-’70s cul-minated in what many consider Lynne’s crowning achievement in acclaimed discs in 1988 and 1991. tone with wood-paneled rooms, and Lynne might recording, ELO’s 1977 double-LP Lynne released one solo album, Armchair The- plug in anywhere. As Joe Walsh, one of Lynne’s release, Out of the Blue. ater in 1990, and 22 years later, on October 9, re- most recent collaborators [see Mix August
50 M I X | N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 2 | mixonline.com
MIX INTERVIEW
2012], says in a new documentary (Mr. Blue Sky: was on my own. I always record by myself, which I The Story of Jeff Lynne and ELO), “Every room in love. I love playing every instrument—that’s my that house is a recording room.” favorite thing, just making a whole, big landscape of The control room still reflects Lynne’s analog racket, with me doing it all. If we’d record every- roots, with a classic 40-channel British Raindirk thing live, at once, I could never get the separation I Symphony LN1 console, a load of EQ modules wanted, and I could never concentrate enough on the rescued from his previous Raindirk Series 3 desk, bits that were really important. When you get those AMS DMX 15-80, S-DMX and RMX-16 digital bits done early on, and they’re tight and just right, it’s de-lays, API 550 and Massenburg 8200 EQ units, much nicer to play to, to add all the gui-tars, pianos, API 512b and Brent Averill 1073 and 1272 mic keyboards and the harmonies. Once it’s solid, it’s just preamps, and plenty of UREI 1176 limiters. Lynne that much more fun to play. and en-gineer Steve Jay, with whom he has collaborated for the past five years, record to Pro Walk us through how you build a track. Tools and mix through the Raindirk, monitoring I’ll start with a click track, which I’ll play to with a hi-hat for about 20 through Yama-ha MSP-10s or Event Opals, as seconds, recording a really good groove. Then I’ll use the click to build up the well as larger ATC SCM100 speakers. tracks. I’ll put the snare on, and Lynne records guitars and vocals in a half-office/half-studio space next to then tom-tom fills and snare fills. I can play a full rhythm track—I’ve been the control room and drums in an extra room filled with spare CDs, box sets drumming since I was 13; I play on a Gretsch kit now that I got during the and 7-inch vinyl. A very large wood-paneled, high-ceilinged room Wil-burys sessions—but not necessarily great. So I prefer to build it up, with downstairs, looking much like the interior of a warm hunter’s lodge (and lots of assistance from Steve and the computer, and just layer it. formerly used to store pinball machines by the previous owner), is used for Nearly all the time now, I’ll also use a big fat bass drum—a 28-inch Ludwig recording piano and string and choir sections, among other things. from 1941 that belongs to Steve. You can cut the room decay down to differ-ent For Mix, Lynne reveals his current recording process, as well as that of his lengths. So on some really slow songs, you can have it quite long. Or if it’s a fast pioneering work with ELO, some techniques of which remain in his massive song, like “Beyond the Sea” on Long Wave, you gotta pull it in a bit, because bag of recording tricks. otherwise, it’s just one big BOOMBOOM-BOOMBOOM. After the bass drum is in place, I’ll put the bass on, real punchy, dead on, on the note. Then I’ll put the You’ve had personal recording studios for years. When was your first? guitar rhythm. From there, I have a foundation to work from. [Points to a Bang & Olufson Beocord 2000 Deluxe reel-to-reel machine in the control room]. That’s my original studio. I got it in 1968. I had a Mellotron in One of the hallmarks of any great Jeff Lynne recording is the drum the front room of my mom and dad’s house, and I had that set up, with a sound. How do you create that? record player right next to it in this big cabinet. It’s a 2-track “sound on There’s a certain sound that I can hear in my head that I can usually create, sound” machine. So you would record on the left track, and then record a mix de-pending on the room we’re in. I can always get it in here because Steve of that along with, say, a second guitar, onto the right track, and just keep knows how to get me the old-fashioned drum sound that I love in that room— bounc-ing, adding a vocal or a bass drum. Sometimes I’d bounce 20 times— a little bit of room on it, and plenty of separation. But a big part of it is I move you’d see through the f***ing tape! It was like Scotch tape in the end. And I the overheads out about 10 feet. I don’t like close-up mics. I don’t like the could do the best phasing on Earth. clicki-ness of them. I especially don’t like a mic under the snare, that little Shure—I hate that sound. It doesn’t even sound like a drum. What did you learn from using it? I learned to experiment. I learned about having sounds together, seeing what This sound really goes back to even the earliest ELO days. piano sounded like with the guitar and how to include the Mellotron. One of the things I do comes from the fact that I couldn’t get enough separa- tion when I would record Bev’s drums. So I used to get him to double-track What do you like about the rooms you use here for recording? the snare drum and some of the tom-toms in a room, on their own. So you’d Everything’s made of wood. The big room downstairs has just the right pick up that, along with just the room sound of those drums, which you can amount of bounce—very soft, not trashy, like a big room can be. The other then turn up separately in the mix of the kit. It was a much better sound, be- room, where I record guitars mainly, has just that perfect ratio of room and cause the room sound of those drums doesn’t bleed onto the bass drum and guitar, like the old BB King kind of blues sound. Dry, but slightly wet. No everything else. I did that from Day One—4-track the snare drum and the reverb. I never use any reverb. And my drum room, which is like a storage tom-tom. That is the drum sound, really. That’s all it is. cupboard—I have some great fun recording in here. You’ll see, I’ve got tielines in each room that lead back to the control room, so there’s no cables On Mr. Blue Sky, you match the signature running down the halls. sound of “Don’t Bring Me Down” perfectly. That’s basically a snare that’s just crushed to death by a UREI [1176]. That’s On the two new albums, you play everything yourself. Do you miss as flat as I could have it without it blowing up or becoming a fuzz box. That’s having a band of guys around to play with? how I did it in the first place, and I did the same method on the new version. No, not really. Don’t forget, when I first started recording, with the B & O, I On the original record, that was actually a drum loop from a different song.
52 M I X | N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 2 | mixonline.com
MIX INTERVIEW
I just took two tracks of drumming—bass drum ing, like choirs. 20 people in a choir—that’s quite an and snare, with a bit of leakage on the hi-hat—put amazing thing to use, if you’ve never done it. And it does it on the 2-track machine and did the old trick, certainly add a completely other dimension to something. wound it round a mic stand and my old pencil. I Same for big string sections, like 30- or 40-piece. It’s think it was two bars long. Recorded that onto the funny, at the start, it used to be, “Oh, a string day 24-track, and then I was ready to go. tomorrow!” with four sessions of strings. But by about Believe it or not, I think that had eight pianos the sixth album, it was, like, “Ugh, string day on it, all doing the same note. God knows what I tomorrow—f***. We’re gonna have to do that all day.” was expecting to happen. It just gets eight times Cause by then, I just wanted to simplify it. louder! If you turn it down, it’s still only one piano. It doesn’t track like a guitar [recorded with The production on Long Wave is decidedly simple. mul-tiple passes], because a guitar bends a bit. It’s because the songs are brilliant. You don’t need You can slightly knock it out of tune, and you get much to make ‘em work. They’re written by proper this big chorus effect. A piano doesn’t do that, of geniuses, like Rogers and Hammerstein—absolutely course, until you bang it out of tune. brilliant people. When I was a kid, I didn’t get it at all. My dad would say, “Oh, this is Richard Rogers,” and I’d go, “How? Why? I Do you miss tape? don’t understand it. It’s just a big load of grownup stuff. What does it mean?” I don’t miss anything about tape, except the fact that you can tie your plants Until I tried listening to it again a few years ago. And I thought, “I’ll have a go at up with it. [Laughs.] one of these buggers and see if I can make sense of it now and do it.”
When did you first get introduced to Pro Tools? How did you approach them? Probably about 14 years ago. I didn’t like it when it was new; it was very To learn these songs, I just sat there, playing a guitar part, listening 100 times, low-bandwidth, it sounded brittle and gray, no color to it. Gradually, over the tunneling in the bits I needed to learn. The way I’ve recorded them, I’ve years, the sampling rates got better. stripped them all of their original flowery arrangements that were very good in the day but not really suitable for the way I wanted to do it, which was What do you like about working in Pro Tools vs. analog recording? more punch, make ’em electric. We rebuilt these songs onto my own track. I love everything about Pro Tools. There were things that sometimes would take a week to do that we can now do in half an hour. It’s so much better, and Your vocal performance, then, becomes so much more important, because there’s no moving parts. There’s 10 different ways to get the same sound. I it’s really all about the melody and the emotion with songs like these. just think it’s super duper. Exactly. And that’s why I really had to try really, really hard to get them And you can see everything you’re doing. Who’d have thought you’d end right. I’d do 10 takes sometimes ‘cause I still wasn’t sure that I’d got up looking at what you’re recording? You can see where the hit is. In the old everything cov-ered. It was daunting trying to sing any of them. I’d come in days, on tape, you wouldn’t have a clue exactly where a beat was while to sing it, and it was, like, “Oh, my God. Oh, here we go… “ editing. You just had to get it right, and then, if you were wrong, you had to do it again and again. You can still hear edits in some of the old ELO tracks, It’s some of your best singing ever. Particularly challenging, I would when we were recording on tape. Now it’s all smooth. imagine, was Roy Orbison’s “Running Scared.” Did you find that, having known him and sung with him, you were able to infuse your How did you do basic tracking with ELO? performance with some of his heart or intonation? When I had the band, I’d always start out with piano, bass, guitar and drums— That’s a really difficult question. I’d listened to him, since I was 13 or 14. It’s live. And I always used to tell them, “Don’t worry, you won’t hear any of this,” like some kind of god…that voice. He’s just…I don’t know, ridiculous. I because of all the overdubbing! [Laughs.] And that goes back to what I was saying mean, how can anybody sing like that? It’s so pure and marvelous and about recording by myself. When I would record with a band, it was four guys emotive. Ev-erything about it just sensational, your hair stands up on end. having to get it right, each playing in their own time, trying to get it right all at once at the same time. Now you can have as many goes as you like, and then still In the ELO days, how would you map out all of those interesting lead tighten it up if you want. If you don’t want anything wrong, you don’t have to vocal and background parts, which are so much fun to listen to? have anything wrong. Now you can do it and there’s nothing wrong. I love it. Well, kind of backwards to how most people would do it. I didn’t have any words to any of those ELO songs until the last couple of days, until I had to Do you find you produce songs in your head prior to recording, mix ‘em. I’d got bits of ideas for words, but I never sat down and wrote them. particularly in the days of complex ELO recordings? I was too busy doing the music. Lyrics were always the big chore. I’d be, like, Yeah, I used to think about sounds a lot. There are certain sounds that are just “Ugh, I’ve gotta do ’em tomorrow.” I’ve got the tune in the back of my mind, built into me. which I could rely on in between doing the rhythm track and finishing all the overdubs, before I did my vocal. For my lead vocal recording, I usually I imagine it was great fun for you to create those sounds, as well. modified the tune to work best with the backing track we’d done. And that Yeah, it was always fun, because I was using stuff that I never dreamed of us- sometimes made it difficult to do the backgrounds, because I hadn’t actually
54 M I X | N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 2 | mixonline.com
MIX INTERVIEW
made the words up yet. So I couldn’t commit myself if they had words in You record dry? I notice you’ve got a nice collection of AMS units. them until I’d done the vocal. Everything’s recorded dry, yeah. I love the AMS, even though it’s digital. It’s 30 years old, and it’s so easy to use. It’s just the best gadget or box I’ve ever known. On tracks like “Mr. Blue Sky,” you always had so many wonderful Very rarely use echo on anything, but, if I do, probably would be on voice, just as miscella-neous vocal bits thrown in, as well. an effect. And I never use reverb, except as an effect on the end of something. “Mr. Blue Sky” had a lot of stuff going on, little instances popping up. Back then, you could fit ’em in between, where there was an empty part on one How did the Mr. Blue Sky album come about? section. The engineer, Mack, would say, “You can have four tracks there, just I heard “Mr. Blue Sky” playing once, and I thought, “I thought it was better on that bit.” Those little pieces popping up—that is the best fun. I love doing than that.” But it obviously wasn’t, not the way I had always heard it in my harmonies; it’s my favorite thing to do. head. So I started with that one, to see what it would be like. I played it for my manager and a lot of other people, and they all went, “Whoa, you should How has your recording experience evolved since ELO? do more.” So I tried “Evil Woman,” and then I tried “Strange Magic.” And I I had a year off, after I disbanded ELO the first time, and I just played on my thought, ”Just keep going, then.” And I enjoyed doing them. desk at home, with me as the engineer. I learned tons about EQ and echo and My goal here really wasn’t just trying to reproduce the original sound. I AMS and stuff. So when I started work with George [Harrison], the en-gineer, was also trying to improve on the overall sound. The guitar sound, the pia-no Richard Dodd, knew I was well aware of all that stuff. sound, the drum sound—trying to improve all the bits that make up the What I’m good at is EQ, and I like certain effects that I always use, though whole. That’s what I aimed for. there are certain ones that I like to experiment with. I have here all the EQ modules from my old 16-track Raindirk desk, because the EQ on them is re- What was the best part of returning to these songs for a second spin? ally, really powerful. It’s got a tremendous sweeping ability. You can sweep What did you learn from them? through certain frequencies on an electric guitar, and it makes it sound like a I learned that even though I’d done quite a few albums up to then, I still need- slide. I used it twice on Long Wave—on “Love Is a Many Splendored Thing” ed to learn as much as I needed to learn. No song is ever the same as another, and “Smile.” It sounds like you’re playing some weird instrument, but it’s when you’re recording them. You can’t beat recording. As far as I’m actually just that. Oh, shut up! Now I’ve told ya—secret’s out. [Laughs.] concerned, it’s as much fun as you can ever have.